


to the end, to the end, the dead remain

by oncewewerezombies



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Alternate Universe - Zombies, Best Friends Forever, Blood and Gore, Caretaking, Feeding, Gen, Humanstuck, Murder, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Self-Defense, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, casually racist character, does it count as cannibalism if someone is a zombie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-27
Updated: 2017-03-27
Packaged: 2018-10-11 14:41:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10467411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oncewewerezombies/pseuds/oncewewerezombies
Summary: You both swore, best friends to the very end.Things haven'tquiteended yet.





	

You are entirely ill at ease.

You've been alone for so long, you've gotten used to the quiet in this house out in the woods. You have one horse, your own patch of cultivated land. You have some small things, comfortable things. Warm. Things from Before, and things from After that you've made yourself. You have made something close to a life for yourself, with your bits and pieces. There is just you, and the horse.

And The Shed, a small distance from the house.

Oh yes. You can't forget The Shed.

It had been one of the first things you'd made. You built it. Well, built is a strong word, perhaps. You put it together, you assembled it from the kit you'd grimly hauled on ropes slung over your shoulders, from town to here, along with the concrete you'd used to sink it down into the earth. It had taken...a long time. You are at least three days walk from what was the closest human epicentre, and the horse hadn't come until later. Maybe you should have moved further away again, but the house was here. You had thought that it would be safe. You had thought that you were far enough away from the road that not too many people would find you, especially after you encourage blackberry and vine and brush to grow over what had once been the drive way. You'd made your own ways to and from, not that you've had much occasion to leave of late. You are fairly self-sufficient and always have been. Thankfully, you've also always been healthy.

This isn't the first company you've had, out here. People have passed by before. Usually, they wave from the road, you wave back and they keep going. You pass each other in the woods, they don't do boundary crossing things like actually come up to your house. It's safer for everyone, if they just keep going. Things just aren't safe anymore. Not for anyone.

Your hand tightens around your mug, and you hear the metal of it whine. Just a little, almost under the level of your hearing as you feel your molars grind against each other. The quartet of teenagers have been blithe company, near unconscious of the danger in the world. Or conscious of it, perhaps, but pretending that they aren't. You aren't sure which is worse, which one irritates you more. Begrudgingly, you've said they could stay the night. You know how far it is from any shelter and there are still some of Them wandering. People had died out there. They are young, and you are...well, you won't go so far as to say old but you are definitely older than they and more established.

All you asked them to do was stay away from The Shed and close to the house.

You had been _perfectly_ explicit.

It is night when you hear the door to The Shed open, your eyes snapping open. The world is quiet now, and the door of the Shed opens with a low rasping screech that you hear in your nightmares over and over again. Flinging the blankets off your body, you run out but you're far too late, the screams have already started. In your hand, your fingers are curled around the grip of the baseball bat that has served you so well before before you realise what you're holding. What did they think you had in there, more supplies? Riches? You wearily suppose that must have been the case, but instead they have found a secret that you have been keeping. 

It is not a nice secret; it is a dangerous one. They really should have just done what you told them. You can't imagine that it would have been hard, _just to do what they were told_. You'd even wasted some of your precious salt on them. You feel offended and betrayed, but you suppose it's nothing to the terror that they're feeling. That they have been feeling since what was in The Shed came out when they opened the door. It's a pity, really. You'd almost warmed to them.

Nepeta has one of them down on the ground already, her blunt teeth fastened in his throat and hands mechanically grabbing and tearing into his body as he screams and screams, a terrible high pitched sound like a rabbit dying until she bites through his windpipe and it dissolves into gurgles. One of them, a girl with blonde hair is readying a gun. A rifle, by the look of it, and there's a pistol on the ground that catches the light of the moon as the cloud parts for a moment. You settle your shoulders, pull back and send the bat careening into her skull with all the strength in you. It's the dark haired boy that's on the ground, the gook, with the redhead turning to look at you as the dull wet sound of your bat impacting with the skull of his friend, blade in hand. 

A katana. Really. What did he think this was, some kind of samurai movie?

You fall back, and then go down as the black girl with the glasses, the one who had given you a recipe for biscuits that really only needed acorn flour and you had _honestly_ been most appreciative, goes for you. Her nails tear strips from your cheeks, and you throw her off with a low grunt of effort. Stronger than she looks, and she'd looked almost sweet when she'd been talking to you in the house. She has a knife, something in her pocket that she tries to hurt you with and she leaves it in your side but it's not that much of a hindrance as you swing again at her kneecap. Nepeta pounces as the coloured woman cries out from the pain, and she goes down with a strangled yelp as your best friend drools blood and her teeth snap. The patch of rot on her cheek catches the moonlight; it looks wet. Or is that just the blood splattered across her face? Oh, the multitudinous seas incarnadine, as though she'd been bending down to drink from them.

There is a stinging in your cheek and you feel the muscles in your back shift, flex with your movement as you swing. Swing, swing. The katana flies into the air as the arc of your bat meets flesh, a straight edged nonsense piece of steel and it sticks upright in the ground, quivering. If there had still been a Hollywood, this would have been a perfect cinematic moment. You swing again, and break his arm, you hear it snap. You don't want to do this, but you don't see an alternative. They've opened the door and let out what was inside; now they have to deal with what they've allowed release. You didn't want to do this. You really hadn't wanted to do this.

"A zombie? You had a fucking zombie in there?" the red head spits at you, and you shift your grip, readying yourself as sweat soaks into the cloth you've wrapped around the handle of your bat. There is only the sound of his panting and yours, and the wet terrible sounds of Nepeta eating one of his companions. You take a deeper breath, and nod slightly. He's the only one left standing and he won't be standing for long, of that you're sure. He's unarmed and alone, and there is a zombie in the clearing between the house and The Shed, the only real two sources of shelter. Nepeta is quite fast, probably faster than he thinks, if he decides to take to the woods. "What the fuck is wrong with you? You killed - you - they're _dead_ \- you fuck -"

"She's my friend," you say slowly, and this is more than you've talked to someone who can answer you back for the longest time. You really wished they'd listened to you. Was it that hard to respect someone else's property, their boundaries? If they'd just done what you had told them to do, respected what you'd said, they would have been leaving in the morning. Alive. This is not your fault. He shouldn't be able to make you feel like it's your fault. "I told you - I said not to go there - you couldn't have just obeyed me and _left_ well enough alone-"

"YOU HAVE A FUCKING PET ZOMBIE!"

"She's my FRIEND!"

You swing as your voice roars out of your throat and your bat obliterates his face, his hands not coming up quite in time to block your furious movement.

Nepeta sits up as he drops like a stone under your blow and ambles over to investigate the new body as you prop yourself up with the bat, panting, knees bent. She has never made a move to hurt you, bite you, not ever. Any other living human...that is quite another matter. But not you. Never you. Oh god, you hurt. That black _bitch_. You pull out the knife and hope that it wasn't smeared with anything, or that your store of precious antibiotics will be able to deal with it if you do garner up an infection. 

You are so tired.

"Nepeta. _Nepeta_." She looks up at you, still chewing and something falls out of her mouth, that empty space on the other side of her face, to fall with a quiet squelch on the ground. At least it's cool. The bodies shouldn't stink too much for a while, and you're not going to waste this much meat. You are already not thinking of them as people, as ex-personalities. They're meat. The type Nepeta prefers. You have contented her with rabbits, the occasional chicken from your small flock that you mostly keep for company because goodness knows they don't lay many eggs, but you know what she likes, you always have. And she prefers meat of this kind. You take her hand, push her hair back out of her face. She doesn't even do this for herself anymore. Her expression is blank and empty, and she doesn't even breathe as she looks at you with filmed over eyes, blue hat still perched almost incongruously on top of her head. You'd given it to her as a birthday present when she was fifteen and you were fourteen, two months behind her, and she'd worn it ever since. It has been years and it does look the worse for wear, it looks its age the way you both do now, but she still has it. Still wears it. Even when so much else has changed.

You miss her. You miss her like she was when she was alive and if you were a stronger, better person, you'd let her die. You would take care of it yourself. But you can't, you can't let go because if you do then you will be truly, horribly alone. 

"Come on, Nepeta. Back inside." You swallow back bile and pick up what was in her mouth, taking her wrist with your other hand. You don't look at the vaguely warm, soft thing in your hand. You just use it as a lure to guide her back to The Shed, throwing it inside and she shuffles towards the lump of meat as you close the door behind her. The padlock is broken, and you mutter in ill content to yourself as you latch the door anyway. Did they _have_ to break it to get inside? Where are you meant to get another lock?

Muttering, you scout around for a thicker stick and jam it into the loop where the padlock should go. It won't hold her if she's feeling very determined but you can't keep her in the house anymore. That's why you built The Shed, and it had _worked_ , it always _worked_ , right up until someone did something stupid like this. It...isn't the first time this has happened. People are just so nosy, so busy body, _they just can't leave well enough alone_. People should do what they were gosh darn told. It is just so simple.

Then you could have avoided...all of this, this and every other time, it could all so easily have been avoided.

Before Nepeta finishes the bit of meat and comes bursting out of the shed for more, you pick up the red head's katana, testing the weight with a swing of your wrist. Seriously. What video game had he been living in? The one where he was the protagonist, and beat all of the zombies? It wouldn't have surprised you to think that he thought he had been. To have survived this long, they must have had some skills. They just hadn't been expecting. Well. A zombie, and a human, working together. The living and the dead. Lifting the blade, you bring it down on one of the wrists that lie on the ground, separating hand from arm. And then the elbow. This gives you two cuts that Nepeta will puzzle and take her time over, as much as she takes her time over anything anymore, and you open the door to throw them in. A low growl reverberates out of the darkness, followed by wet grinding noises as she gnaws on what you've given her to eat.

Your hands are slick and you kneel to wipe them on the grass. Survey the work that is laid out for you to do. If you butcher the meat, and store it in the root cellar, it might even keep for most of a week. That will save you some work to keep Nepeta fed and contented. It's a pity Nepeta really only eats fresh meat. If you could have salted it or jerked it, then you could ration it out but it's just not the same for her, apparently. She turns her nose up at it. Surprising, since she never used to be a picky eater.

Things have changed.

No point bemoaning the way things are; the way things are, are the way things _are_ and you have work to do.

You need to get this meat into the cellar before it attracts more unwelcome company, or Nepeta decides to come out and play with you. If they hadn't cut the fiddlesticking lock, you would be in a much better position in at least one of those things. Sitting here, thinking about how hard your life can be, isn't going to get the work done. Lifting yourself up off the grass with a sigh, you take the katana with you to the house so you can exchange it for your axe. A far more serviceable, practical instrument. Resting it on your shoulder, you head out into your backyard to start your butchering. It's a good thing Nepeta doesn't mind your rough cuts. As long as she can get her teeth into it, it's fine. Putting your foot on a torso, you lift the axe over your head and bring it down in the way you've learned is the best to start dismembering meat into pieces you can carry easily.

You hope that one of them has some kind of lock in their backpacks. You really don't know where you're going to get another, otherwise, and it would just be irresponsible not to lock The Shed. Someone could get in there, and that would just be tempting fate. Something horrible could happen.


End file.
